After six weeks of battle on the felt at the 2014 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, the major Player of the Year races in the poker world have been completely readjusted. One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is that all three major rankings have a completely different picture of who is having the best 2014 to this date.
On the Bluff Magazine Player of the Year race, “Big One for One Drop” champion Dan Colman has surged out to a nice lead with his 845.7 points. The “Big One” was the only tournament that Colman would earn a cash in at the 2014 WSOP, but it was enough to put him at the top slot of the Bluff board over Ole Schemion (804.74 points). Colman and Schemion are the only two players who have cracked the 800-point mark on the Bluff leaderboard.
After taking down his first WSOP bracelet during the summertime festival, George Danzer has put his name in the mix for Bluff’s 2014 POY award. His 778.85 points barely eke out the third place slot over Mustapha Kanit (777.48 points), who made two final tables among his four cashes at the WSOP. The Top Five on the Bluff race is rounded out by Joseph McKeehen (764.72), who pops in due to his runner-up finish in the “Monster Stack” at the WSOP and a win during the Venetian DeepStack Extravaganza.
Although we are now more than halfway through the tournament year, the remainder of the Top Ten is within striking distance of the leaders. Dan Smith (6th place, 716.25 points), Mike McDonald (715.08), Alex Bilokur (692.0), Doug Polk (686.0) and WSOP bracelet winner and Poker Players’ Championship runner-up Brandon Shack-Harris (672.9) can make their cases even stronger for the Bluff POY award with a strong second half of the year.
For the CardPlayer Magazine Player of the Year race, there are some new faces that make appearances. While Kanit rules over the roost on the CardPlayer POY with his 4514 points, Dylan Wilkerson’s first-half tirade on the World Poker Tour was bolstered by three cashes at the WSOP in making up his 3316 point total. Although he hasn’t cashed since March, PokerStars Caribbean Adventure champion Dominik Panka still has enough points to hold the third place slot (3315), while McDonald (3312) and PCA $25,000 High Rollers’ victor Jake Schindler (3300) round out the Top Five.
The WPT World Champion, Keven Stammen, didn’t have the best run at the WSOP, but he’s still in the mix for the overall POY as he leads off the remainder of the Top Ten with 3052 points. Shack-Harris has thrust his name into the mix, landing in seventh place with 2890 points. Ami Barer (2830), McKeehen (2780) and Davidi Kitai (2588) round out the remainder of the CardPlayer POY.
The Global Poker Index’ 2014 Player of the Year race is an amalgam of the two previous listings. Making perhaps a surprise appearance atop the GPI POY is 2014 WSOP bracelet winner Bilokur, who has amassed 1071.07 points to slip ahead of Stammen’s 1001.05 points for the overall lead. Smith (who didn’t appear in the CardPlayer rankings) reappears on the GPI listings in third place (968 points), but he’s facing some heat from Scott Seiver (953.71) and Daniel Negreanu (946.18), neither of whom appeared in either the Bluff or CardPlayer rankings.
Kanit is in a solid sixth place on the GPI POY as we reach the half-pole of the tournament season with 940.52. Five cashes at the WSOP are keeping Byron Kaverman in the mix on the GPI board, with Kaverman the final player who has more than 900 points (940.52, to be exact) at this time. The GPI POY is rounded out by Jason Mercier (866.04), Jeff Madsen (865.19) and Matt Glantz (858.99); strangely, none of these three men are listed on Bluff or CardPlayer’s rankings, either.
The tournament poker world will now go into a bit of a post-WSOP stupor as players recharge their batteries (or their bankrolls) in preparation for the final four months of the tournament season.
Although there are a slew of smaller tournaments ongoing in the month of July, the major tours will kick back into action in August. The WPT will open up action for its Season XIII schedule with the Legends of Poker at the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles; the WSOP Circuit opens up its first action of its new season at Foxwoods in Connecticut and the European Poker Tour kicks off its Season 11 schedule in Barcelona, Spain. These, along with several other sizeable non-poker tour events (the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open, 2013’s biggest surprise, will be back at the end of August with its $10 million guaranteed event) will keep the various POY leaderboards quite fluid until the beginning of December.
